1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to increasing the speed of dispensing articles from machines for vending or dispensing discrete articles, and more particularly relates to methods and apparatus for increasing the speed of dispensing articles from machines for vending or dispensing articles such as scrub garments and the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Scrub garments are uniforms typically worn by doctors, nurses, and other medical workers in hospital operating rooms or other locations where the workers are likely to be in immediate proximity with patients. These scrub garments are hereafter called “scrubs”. Scrubs provide an easily-changed launderable barrier between the wearer and the patient, helping to prevent the patient from exposure to germs or infectants on the wearer's body or street clothing.
Hospitals normally make scrubs available to doctors and other medical workers at no direct cost to those users. Although each user is supposed to have only a limited number of scrubs at any given time for his or her personal use, some users will hoard scrubs of their size to maintain their own personal reserve. Other users may appropriate extra sets of scrubs for their own personal use, at home or elsewhere outside the hospital. These and other improper uses of scrubs contribute to an unacceptable shrinkage in the inventory of scrubs maintained by the institution for use by authorized persons.
An approach to overcome the foregoing problem is to dispense scrubs from a vending machine or apparatus. One such vending apparatus is found in application Ser. No. 08/371,363 entitled “Vending Apparatus and Method,” filed on Jan. 11, 1995, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,638,985, which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. An embodiment of the vending apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,638,985 provides of a number of receptacles or slots from which one or more articles are dispensed. The receptacles are preferably disposed in a matrix of one or more generally linear arrays of receptacles. The apparatus further provides an interior receptacle door assembly made up of a plurality of moveable receptacle doors positionable to allow access to a selected column of receptacles while blocking access to the remaining columns of receptacles. In addition, the apparatus provides exterior user doors that cover the receptacle door assembly and all the receptacles in a row of receptacles, thus preventing access to the receptacle door assembly and to the receptacles. In order to dispense the scrubs from a particular receptacle, the vending apparatus first operates the receptacle door assembly to allow access the particular column of receptacles or column. Then, the vending apparatus unlocks a particular user door associated with a row of receptacles to provide access to the particular receptacle in the exposed column. Then, a user seeking to obtain the scrubs may open the user door and remove the scrubs from the particular receptacle through the receptacle doors. Because the receptacle door assembly prevents access to all other receptacles in the row, the user cannot remove the scrubs from any receptacle other than the one initially selected in the vending operation.
Once the vending operation is complete, it is preferable in this embodiment of the apparatus for the mechanism used to position the receptacle door to return to a home location in order to re-close the previously-opened receptacle and put all the receptacle doors in a known position for the next dispensing operation. However, there is a disadvantage to following this practice. For example, a typical vending operation requires only about six seconds for completing the dispensing of the scrubs to a user. However, a user request for dispensing scrubs immediately followed by a subsequent user request for dispensing scrubs can be time consuming if the mechanism used to position the receptacle doors is required to return to the home location to reset the doors after the first user request is complete and before engaging in the subsequent user request. This full reset operation can add as much as twelve to fifteen seconds to the total dispensing operation. As a result, a waiting line may form when a number of users want to obtain articles from the dispenser at the same time, for example, a number of hospital employees trying to obtain their scrubs during a shift change at a hospital.
Thus, a need exists to try and minimize the time delay experienced between two dispensing operations that immediately follow one another in a vending apparatus of the type discussed above. Such improvements will help to dispense articles, such as scrubs, to users in a more timely fashion and, in particular, help hospital staff to more quickly obtain their work scrubs and report to duty for their shift.